1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera operating apparatus and method, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for rotating and storing a shot image so that a storage direction of an image shot with the camera rotated may be a reference storage direction.
2. Description of the Related Art
As illustrated in FIG. 1, if an image is shot (i.e., captured) with a conventional digital or film camera that is rotated from its normal (e.g., horizontal) orientation as shown in FIG. 1A, the image remains (i.e., is stored) in a shooting direction as shown in FIG. 1B as it was captured. Thus, for proper viewing of the image on a screen, the stored image is rotated manually using a camera menu or rotated on a personal computer (PC) using image manipulation software and stored again afterwards.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a convention method for rotating an image stored in a conventional digital camera. An image to rotate is selected (operation 200) and a rotate menu is selected (operation 202). Whether to rotate the selected image is judged (operation 204) and a rotational direction is set (operation 206). If the rotational direction is set, the selected image is rotated (operation 208) and the rotated image is stored (operation 210).
In other conventional digital cameras a gravity sensor is mounted to or included in the camera so that a rotational direction of the camera may be recognized instantly and the image may be automatically stored appropriately for the rotational direction.
If a camera is rotated to perform a shooting, namely, the shooting is performed with the camera rotated in a longitudinal direction or upside down, the shot images are stored in a direction different from a direction of an original object. So, in case of playing the shot images, a user should rotate the camera to check the images. To improve such inconvenience, a menu for rotating an image in a playing mode is provided. However, since an image should be rotated one by one, there is inconvenience that a user should manipulate the menu upon rotation case by case. In the meantime, in case of recognizing a rotational direction of a camera using a gravity sensor to automatically rotate and store a shot image, a manufacturing cost is increased and a small-sizing of a camera is difficult.